I was a Fortune 500 HR SVP for ten million years, but I was an opera singer before I ever heard the term HR. The higher I got in the corporate world, the more operatic the action became. I started writing about the workplace for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1997, but it took me ages to find my own voice. Now I write for the Huffington Post, Business Week, LinkedIn, the Harvard Business Review, the Denver Post and Forbes.com and lead the worldwide Human Workplace movement to reinvent work for people. Stop by and join us: http://www.humanworkplace.com

How to Answer Stupid Job Interview Questions

A job interview is a strange kind of business meeting. As a serious job seeker you’ll spend hours preparing for the interview. Despite your research, intelligence-gathering and thoughtful preparation, you’ll typically have little to no idea what you’re walking into.

One day you’re invited to an interview with smart and interesting people who can’t wait to hear your opinions on your industry, their organization’s progress and your own career. The next day, you might interview with a clan of Neanderthals who leave you sitting in the reception area for forty-five minutes and then pepper you with insulting and brainless questions that would make a fourth-grader wince. A job interview is a pig in a poke. As a job-seeker you have to be ready for anything.

When you run into tired, idiotic job interview questions like “Why should we hire you?” and “What’s your greatest weakness?” you may have to fight the urge to sigh, grimace or ditch the interview altogether. You’d think that after fifty or sixty years of articles about how to interview people, we’d have evolved past these Mad-Men-era interview questions, but not every hiring manager and HR chief is clued in.

The craziest thing about brainless interview questions is that there are so many alternatives. We can ask job-seekers “If you were our CEO, what’s one thing you’d do differently?”

We can ask them “What’s your greatest professional accomplishment so far, and why?” or “How do you break down a large project and manage it over time?”

You can ask a candidate about his or her life and career goals. The array of pithy and substantive topics we can address with job-seekers is almost limitless. So why oh why would anyone resort to an asinine question like “With all the talented candidates, why should we hire you?”

The truthful answer, “How the heck should I know, Jackson? You’ve met the other candidates, and I haven’t!” is likely to bring the interview to an abrupt end. We coach our clients to answer the “Why you?” question thoughtfully without resorting to a grovelly answer like “Because I’m smart and hard-working, I’m loyal and thrifty, and I walk old ladies across the street.”

“Why should we hire you?” is a stupid interview question because it asks — demands, in fact – that a job candidate roll over and submit to the alpha dog interviewer.

The interviewer has your resume and has you in the room, sitting there waiting to be asked anything s/he can think of. So why would an interviewer ask you to compare yourself to people you haven’t met and most likely never will? That’s an invitation to grovel. Pass on the invitation and say this, instead:

“That’s a great question. I think that’s why we’re here, in fact – to determine whether I’m the right person for this job and whether you’re the right organization for me. I honestly can’t say that you should hire me, because I don’t know the culture and the goals here the way you do. You know the organization, you know yourself and your leadership style, and now you know a little about my background and my perspective. I’m confident you’re going to hire the person who’s the best fit for this position, and that if the universe wants the two of us to work together, it’ll happen.”

Right behind “Why should we hire you?” in the Stupid Interview Question line-up is “What’s your greatest weakness?”

That’s a very personal question, and an impertinent one. Does everyone on earth have to come with weaknesses? What if we’re actually sent down to this planet fine and whole, perfectly suited for our work here? The concept of inherent weaknesses and the struggle to improve on our deficits is a tired and unhelpful Puritan notion. We should have junked it years ago. But interviewers still ask perfect strangers “What’s your greatest weakness?” in job interviews every day.

You can say “Chocolate!” with a big smile to fend off further intrusive questions, but an interviewer who’s comfortable asking candidates about their weaknesses isn’t likely to be thrown off the track that easily. If pressed, you can smile and say “I used to obsess about my weaknesses when I was younger. I read books and took classes to correct what I thought were my deficiencies.

Watch to learn the business tricks 20-somethings need to know:

Over time I’ve realized that my job is not to get slightly better at things I’ll never be great at, like [fly-tying] and [Morse code]. My job is to get better at the things I’m already good at that I can use to help myself and other people, like graphic design and copywriting.” If your mojo is up on the interview day, you can follow with “What’s your greatest weakness?”

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“Why should we hire you?” I was asked this once and my response was “The better question is why shouldn’t you?”. The interviewer’s eyes got wide with surprise and I gave a list of some top reasons I should be hired. I got the job on the spot. That could come off as arrogant, so have a list of at least five reasons they should hire you. Arrogance and confidence are not the same thing, but some folks have a hard time telling the difference. You really can gain more control of an interview, even take complete control and remove the opportunity for questions like this to be asked. A technique I use is writing formal responses to the list of desired skills/requirements. I create a “package” for the person conducting the interview which consist of the resume on top, completed application (if any) and then the requirements list with each point addressed by me after that. Bring at least three copies of all this and do not pass it along before the face to face. Try to get the interview scheduled for mid-morning or late afternoon. This way the person conducting the interview will typically have somewhere to be within hours. Now that the amount of time for all this is limited you have your chance to not only control the interview but to clearly demonstrate that you are efficient, prepared and the obvious choice.

After initial pleasantries are complete tell the person conducting the interview that you appreciate that time is short. Say that you imagined the interview could go one of two ways. They can ask any questions they like and conduct the interview in any way they wish or (in the interest of saving time (do say this again)) pull out your packet and tell them you have written responses to the requirements and if it works for them, you would like to go down the list and if they need more elaboration on any point just say the word. When an employer provides a list of requirements they have given you a script for the interview and not using this to your advantage is a real mistake. Think about it. You now control the order of the questions asked and typically how much time is spent on each point. Also, you’ve taken the time to write this out so the person conducting the interview can always go back to the paper and not have to try to remember things that were only spoken (again, you are prepared, efficient and even thoughtful). You are answering all their questions and they don’t even have to ask them! They can just sit back and let you do the work. Keep these papers in both hands whenever possible to help avoid unwanted body language/gestures from happening and check off the points as you complete them (you are detail oriented). Try it some time.

So this is why us high-functioning autistics can’t get jobs, even with college degrees. Too many socially controlled morons asking dumb questions that in many cases have nothing to do with actual job skills. It’s like they’re begging for people who can lie and social their way through the interview rather than people who can do the job.

A meritocratic company could fix that problem, by not dealing with it in the first place.

Love this, Liz! I’m not sure the kind of interviewers who ask these cliched questions are open-minded enough to be receptive to curveball answers, but maybe hearing a few of those would prompt them to reconsider their interviewing approach.

At one point, these gotchya questions may have been useful. Now, they only serve to make the interviewer seem like somebody without much in terms of original thoughts/ideas—and could turn off intelligent candidates from wanting to work in such an office. Interviewers use these questions at their own peril

Interview questions have to be thoughtful and designed in away that gives the whole process of interviewing a possible candidate a natural feel to it. Those common questions would injure candidate’s interest of giving a good response. Also, it does not help to distinguish an employer from another.. (it could harm a company’s image)..

Great article – thank you. Like you say with all the resources available it does beggar belief that such stupid questions are still being asked. I do remember being asked – and this was back in the 90′s (1990′s) “what type of hat do you wear?” and this was in an interview for a position in the leisure industry! Seriously though the interview is a two way thing – candidates are assessing the company and if those asking the questions are representing their brand in such a way they are going to miss out on the best people.

I think Liz is very much off the mark and do not really understand the meaning OR reason of asking the question. I will start with first, Why we should hire you? It is not meant to compare the candidate with others but to ensure he has understood the job requirements and what skills he possesses that makes him an ideal candidate for this job. It is not to compare him with others.

2nd Question, what are your weaknesses? This is a very relevant question. I have faced this question during my interview with INDIAN ARMY. I listed out all weaknesses I had known about me. Then at the end, they asked me if I had any question to ask them. I asked them that so far , I have faced many interviews and everybody was interested in my strengths where as they were the first one who asked my weaknesses. And their answer will make you understand why it is a very relevant question.

They said “If you know your weaknesses, you will improve upon them. It is a sign that you are constantly trying to improve. Unless you know your weakness, how can you improve? They compare your answer with their assessment about your weaknesses. So, a candidate who knows his/her weakness is very likely to perform much better as he/she is trying to improve himself/herself . This is very important to any organisation.

I hope this makes sense. So instead of making fun of many questions, please try and find a reason behind such question before making fun of it.

These idiotic questions only serve to make the interviewer look like an egotistical ass, and force me question whether I even want to work for that company. Recently I was grilled for 4 hours by a panel of managers at two different companies for two different jobs. Neither resulted in an offer, because I was way too honest in my answers.

Some of the inane line of questioning included being told to state, not one, but 3 weaknesses “and don’t say perfectionist”. I was also asked whether I was “a cucumber or a pickle”. These both occurred at one of the largest, most popular companies in the U.S. The entire hiring process is a disaster right now, and I am grateful for Ms. Ryan’s perspective on the ridiculousness of it all.